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VIDEO: Olympic gold medalist leads Savannah bike ride on foot

Photos by Corey Dickstein/Savannah Morning News

Joey Cheek, the 2006 Winter Olympic gold medalist in the 500-meter speed skating event, left, leads a group of about 40 bicyclists Saturday during the Tellu-RIDE event put on by the Savannah Bicycle Campaign as part of the Mountainfilm on Tour’s stop in Savannah.

Bicycle riders finish an about four-mile bike ride through downtown Savannah Saturday during the Tellu-RIDE event.

While about 40 participants pedaled about four-and-a-half miles around downtown Savannah late Saturday afternoon, Joey Cheek led from his feet.

The two-time Olympic speed skater, who won gold in the 500-meter race at the 2006 games in Turin, Italy, ditched his bike in favor of running shoes during the second annual Tellu-RIDE bicycling event hosted by the Savannah Bicycle Campaign as part of Mountainfilm on Tour’s stop in Savannah this week.

Cheek, 33, was in town serving as an ambassador for the film, “Right to Play,” about another former Olympic speed skater who set out to make a difference in the lives of some of the world’s most at-risk children.

“My role is to come in ... to talk about why it’s important to get involved in this sort of thing,” said Cheek, who in addition to his work with “Right to Play,” co-founded Team Darfur, a group of athletes committed to raising awareness about the crises in Darfur, Sudan. “To show why it matters to people in Savannah — and people in North Carolina, where my home is — why it matters to us what’s going on in Africa and southeast Asia and the Middle East.”

It’s the second year Mountainfilm, based in Telluride, Colo., has hosted bike rides at its touring events, said Henry Lystad, the director of Mountainfilm on Tour.

They started after featuring a film last year titled “With My Own Two Wheels” that shows how bicycles can make a huge difference in the lives of people who don’t have access to other forms of transportation.

“It changes their lives,” Lystad said. “We want people here in these communities to realize what a four- or five-mile bike ride is like, because that is changing the lives of these thousands of people (in underserved areas of the world) who are lucky enough to receive bikes (from nonprofit organizations like World Bike Relief) that we can help pay for.”